Becoming Librarian 2.0

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Becoming Librarian 2.0

• Associate Professor Helen Partridge
• CAVAL Information Professions Conference 2009

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Professions Australia 2005

• facing a major skills challenge across a number
  of professional occupations
• new technologies are resulting in significant
  transformation in the contemporary workforce
• current approaches to professional skills
  development may be inadequate

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(No Transcript)
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What percentage of Australians regularly use web
2.0 technologies?

1. 76
2. 51
3. 32
4. 23
5. 83

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How many hours of video are uploaded to YouTube
per minute?

1. 1 hour
2. 3.5 hours
3. 9 hours
4. 13 hours
5. 22 hours

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What percentage of Australians started their own
blog in 2008?

1. 15
2. 23
3. 30
4. 54
5. 62

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How many new twitter messages or tweets are
there per day?

1. Half a million
2. 1.25 million
3. 3 million
4. 4.3 million
5. 1 billion

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How many minutes are spend on facebook per day?

1. Half a million
2. 1.25 million
3. 3 million
4. 5 million
5. 1 billion

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• Web 2.0 requires an LIS professional with a new
  type of skill and knowledge. Enter Librarian 2.0!

But, library education continues To be framed in
disciplinary traditions that do not reflect these
changing requirements.
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The issue of library education

• a crisis in library education (Gorman, 2004)
• somethings amiss with university based
  education for librarianship (Harvey, 2001)
• a fresh approach needs to be taken considering
  the education and development of the new
  information professional (Myburgh, 2003)
• many librarians have little firsthand experience
  with library education after they graduate
  (Moran, 2001)
• LIS educators can be totally out of touch with
  current industry practice (Hallam, 2007)

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• The fellowship program will
• Identify the current and anticipated skills and
  knowledge required by successful library and
  information science professionals in the age of
  web 2.0 (and beyond)
• Establish the current state of library and
  information science education in Australian for
  supporting the development of web 2.0
  professionals
• Identify models of best practice

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8 key themes

• Technology
• Learning
• Training and education
• Research or evidence based practice
• Communication
• User focus
• Business savvy
• Personal traits

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• Information literacy
• Lifelong learning
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Ethics and social responsibility
• Project management
• Critical thinking
• Business acumen
• Problem solving
• Self management

Partridge, Helen L. and Hallam, Gillian C. (2004)
The double helix a personal account of the
discovery of the structure of the information
professional's DNA. In Challenging ideas. ALIA
2004 Biennial Conference, 21-24 September 2004,
Gold Coast, Australia. http//conferences.alia.org
.au/alia2004/pdfs/partridge.h.paper.pdf
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• Even if you were flexible you have to be even
  more so, you have to be even more inquisitive,
  you have to be even more multi-tasked, more
  multi-skilled.
• people who have these skills are 1 in 100,
  the challenge is to make it the norm
• not just one person, everyone has to be there,
  we all have to be competent at a level
• everybody not just the hero worker
• raising of the bar for the profession
• isnt room for average, mediocre librarians
  anymore.

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But the key and most interesting element..

• A few quotes..
• Cultural change
• Paradigm shift
• A new way of thinking
• Its an attitudinal thing
• Mindset shift
• How you think about your profession has to change
  
• Shift in ideas
• A new way of thinking about librarianship
• A shift in thinking is required
• More vision
• being the people we want
• move away from our focus on our systems and
  processes
• Its a mental thing

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LEVELS OF PERSPECTIVE - Kim
Vision
LEVERAGE
Mental Models
Systemic Structures
Patterns of behaviour
Events
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Learning to become a professional involves not
only what we know and can do, but also who we are
(becoming).When a professional education program
focuses on the acquisition and application of
knowledge and skills, it falls short of
facilitating their integrating into professional
ways of being (Dall Alba, 2009)
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Epistemology Ontology
theory of knowing
theory of being
Who are we?
What we know can do
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Knowledge and skills acquisition does not ensure
skilful practice. This is not to deny the
importance of knowledge and skills but, rather,
to argue that their acquisition is insufficient
for enacting skilful practice and for
transformation of the self that achieving such
practice inevitably involves. By focusing on
epistemology, we fail to facilitate and support
this transformation (Dall Alba, 2005)
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a students engineering education should be
focused on them developing an identity as a
professional engineer. This identify not only
includes the knowledge and skills usually
developed in engineering programs, but attitudes
and self beliefs towards being able to practice
as an engineer (Mann, Howard, Nouwens, Martin,
2009)
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agentic professionals are professionals who are
pro-active and engaged in making meaning and
developing capacities in way that are
intentional, effortful and are actively
criticality in constructing their knowledge
(Stephen Billett, 2009)
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